Jedi Philosophy

I think there is a word missing from this thread in a huge way.
Perspective. If you know someone who has been murdered or raped, then it obviously will hit you harder and you will want more severe justice than if it were a total stranger a thousand miles away. I know a lot of people will try to argue that point but it’s fact. I’m not saying it’s wrong to feel that way either. We are all human and thusly flawed. Our friends and family’s have a special place in our hearts and the thought of that happening to a loved one is devistating. Murders and violent criminals deserve to be punished. But to kill them makes us no better than they are.

Jedi are not now, nor will they ever be, judge jury and executioners. We are better than that! Self defense is exactly that. Protecting ourselves and others from iminant threat or harm. After the fact, after the trial, it is our judicial systems job to determine punishment. We as Jedi, see the value in ALL life. Not all life that we personally dream morally worthy....but ALL life. To encourage another person to take a life is beyond wrong. It’s very easy to scream I’m pro death penalty when ur not the one doing the executing. Your letting your moral outrage make another person take a life. Two wrongs don’t make a right. No amount of justice will ever undo what’s already been done. No amount of revenge will ever make you or the victim feel better.

So where does that leave us? Back at our personal morals. Do you believe it’s ok to take another’s life? Plain and simple. What said person has done is irrelevant.... is it ok to kill another human being? If your awnser is yes, the my question is what makes you any different than the person your talking about killing. If your response to that is “I’m not the one that’s gonna kill him”, then I suggest you take a long look at your ego and figure out why you think it’s ok to have others kill for you just to ease your personal heartache, because it won’t change what’s happened.

We’re Jedi and we ARE better than this. It’s our job to be the example of what is right, and just. If we can stop the crime then will should by any means possible to protect ourselves and those that can’t protect themselves. But after the fact....to end a life when it can be prevented is wrong. Let them spend there lives in jail, which is a worse punishment in my eyes anyways.

We’re Jedi and we ARE better than this. It’s our job to be the example of what is right, and just.

Eh....

#2 The fact that most rape victims don’t get justice doesn’t bother you?

Rape, (and I suppose a bunch of other crimes) are really hard to prove, one way or another.
And, in the absence of damn near absolute confidence (I think the popular phrase is "beyond reasonable doubt") the courts of many states are more or less required to come to "not guilty" (which is slightly different from "innocent")

I guess that's why we call it a Legal System not a Justice system. (Countries that think their courts deal Justice probably also have public stonings....)

What's the other phrase? Better a hundred guilty men go free than a single innocent man be imprisoned?

So, you believe justice and “your moral outrage are not the same thing”? You know nothing about that person. What if s/she was raped? Or a loved one was murdered? Do you get to decide what justice is for a rapist or murderer? What if a sexual assault ruined the life of the victim? Would a slap on the wrist and a “poor you” to the victim be justice because ‘you’ happen think it’s just “moral outrage”?

And you know nothing about me? I live in the same shitheel world as the rest of everyone else - and I'm not above it's problems. I try to have ethics that reduce my tendency to add to it's problems though.

(As far as it goes, in a number of limited circumstances, I do get to decide what justice is, so I am not *completely* unfamiliar with the burden of deciding someone's fate after the fact and beyond the point where the original transgression can be undone. As you might expect, I am only given these opportunities in situations that do not involve me personally, or people close to me - I guess because there is a feeling that that would make my decision less impartial, and possibly not just?) - YMMV by I actually find it quite hard to punish someone for a crime that didn't affect me, that I don't care about, and I that I can't change now - to then decide, coldly, impartially, that further suffering must occur? It's not as easy as it sounds.

Getting into a tangent here - but that means I suffer. Is it justice that I, in the act of meting out justice for someone else, then suffer?

I had an attempted sexually assault when I was 18 by a person who was my best friend for years. He wanted to get me pregnant to “lock me in” before I went to college. This happened over 20 years ago and my feelings about it have not changed. I would rather die than be forced to have a kid. Luckily I had a broken plastic fork that I was prepared to defend myself with lethal force. Luckily, he broke off the attempted assault when I fought. So don’t you dare tell me that what I see as justice is just “moral outrage”. Abusers would love to live in a world where the damage of victims is belittled and they get a slap on the wrist no matter the hell the victims endure. This attitude of protecting rapists and murders is a deliberate slap in the face to victims.

I mean, that sucks and all, but your outrage being super personal doesn't actually make me wrong about what justice is....

and, I'm not inclined to share my stories to win an argument, but see above - I live in the same shitty world as everyone else, and have encountered, and likely will encounter in the future, a variety of shitty people - There are certainly people that I would consider taking incredible, painful, agonising, vengeance on - but I would not make the mistake of imagining what I would like to do is any parallel to "justice"


I guess that's the thing about philosophy, or ethics, or codes - it's very easy to say "love everyone" when you live in a world of love.

If you can't hold onto that belief after someone punches you in the face - then did you ever believe it in the first place?

It still amazes me how so many “Jedi” are more concerned with protecting violent offenders than victims.

I don't know that it is a creed of "protecting violent offenders" so much as a policy of not forming lynch mobs.

Every time I think I know a thing about justice I just watch this series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3F9n_smGWY

Made for hollywood yes, but it doesn't change the fact that 5 people were imprisoned innocently.

Or this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6IXQbXPO3I

Or I just watch this small lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY&t=2403s

I'm not sure justice is about buying suffering off, in some transaction of rewriting history to try and remove the pain and right the wrong. I think its more realistic to see justice as about the system of social law and order (ie society within State) recognizing the crime and its perpetrator, and removing them from society so they cannot do it again. The duration of which depends on the severity of crime.

People often use the language of getting justice as if it were getting damages... which I think is wrong, and I doubt is the Doctrinal meaning here of the inherent 'worth' of each individual :silly:

Why do I suggest this, namely because suffering is entirely a subjective personal experience - what is suffering for one person might be pleasure for another, but more saliently is the problem of measuring suffering in some context which is transposable across persons, such that it can be balanced by punishment. Pain is hard to measure, it can be expressed but ones ability to express pain does not necessarily directly equate to their experience of suffering pain, or what amount of that experience was directly a result of the crime. So IMO the legal system doesn't seem to try 'punish' people anymore, but protect everyone else. Part of the evolving of humanity, otherwise we'd still be using punishment as amusement and being lost to intergroup violence as self identity ie somewhere between savagery and barbarianism. I'd like to think we've come a long way from that, even if our language hasn't really recognised it. So if its not about punishment as justice, but rather recognition and penalties on the freedoms of the perp as justice, the question falls more on what is appropriate legal remedy for the victim. Organizations can more easily be made to remedy in material terms so that does serve as an indirect mechanism to reduce the incentive for organizations to commit crime, because if they are caught they can be punished within some objective framework (albeit there will still be some subjective interpretation by the Court but this is to the favor of the victim obviously). At an individual level it becomes less of a disincentive because a small organization, group or individual has less capacity to remediate damages.... but I guess the Court's can use their power to incarcerate to compel the perp to meet their obligations to the Court order in this regard.

So to me just represents solidity or sturdiness of a system, and that system is the State's legal framework and enforcement mechanisms. At different levels of analysis that can represent different things, like a just system must serve the people by striking a balance between the 'rights' of an individual and the 'rights' of the rest of the individuals, in any action. At the level of a crime, then it's more about the balance between known and unknown to find truth between the parties involved. If the balance is striven for to the realistic extents, then it can be said to just, IMO. That is fairness AFAIK. But, all just IMO #pun

So the death penalty, IMO, is a poor punishment, but powerful token of remediation. Unfortunately it might not be just if it were to be prone to error in anyway. I'm personally not into tokenism so much, and it's probably not a perfect system enough to serve such finality, even though there are plenty of crimes which seem to clearly deserve some 'full extent of punishment' - but I don't think that exists in reality beyond the desire of the victim to return the favor ie an eye for an eye.